Posts in the “personal” category

“Never be a prisoner of your past. It was a lesson, not a life sentence.”

~ possibly from Anna Grace Taylor

In the interest of truth and honesty in politics, the full context of the Joe Biden quote, “You won’t be safe in Joe Biden’s America,” is this:

“Since they have no agenda or vision for a second term, Trump and Pence are running on this, and I find it fascinating: ‘You won’t be safe in Joe Biden’s America.’ And what’s their proof? The violence we’re seeing in Donald Trump’s America.”

I really despise all of the lying in current American politics, so I wanted to share that “fact check.” You can find this full, accurate quote on the Daily Mail and many other websites.

Four kidney stones, lined up in a row next to the ureter stent.

Way back in the day — in the days that were mostly before Linux — I did some work with the Santa Cruz Operation, which was known as SCO. When I moved to Louisville, Kentucky in the 1990s, I went from working on Unix systems from IBM, DEC, and SGI to working on SCO Xenix systems. Because of that business I eventually became an SCO-authorized instructor.

One lasting token of that relationship is this SCO clock. I always liked their tree logo, so I’ve kept the clock all these years, but as I was packing a little today, I don’t know if it’s going to make the next move with me, or not.

I realized today that most of my nieces don’t know me as the guy who co-founded a successful small business. (Back in the day we had 15 employees, five contractors, revenue of almost $2M and profit of $400-500K.) Instead, they know me as the uncle that moved to Alaska, has a rare blood disease, and writes books.

“Whoever knowingly and willfully obstructs or retards the passage of the mail, or any carrier or conveyance carrying the mail, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than six months, or both.”

~ from this Cornell University Law School page

When I went through the process of renewing my passport yesterday I was reminded that once upon a time I had Canadian auto insurance.

I can confirm that it’s hard to stay upright when your blood pressure gets too low.

For those in the know, here’s an eighth of an inch stone.

Grown men may learn from little children, for the hearts of little children are pure, and, therefore, the Great Spirit may show to them many things which older people miss.

~ Black Elk

In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities; in the expert’s mind there are few.

~ Shunryu Suzuki

Today I learned about Empathy Deficit Disorder (EDD) from this article:

• They jump fast into criticizing others without putting themselves in other people’s shoes.
• They seem to be cold or just out of touch for people that are suffering or are less fortunate.
• They believe 100% in the rightness of their own ideas and/or beliefs, and judge anyone who does not hold their beliefs as wrong, ignorant or stupid.
• They have trouble feeling happy for others.
• They have trouble making or keeping friends.
• They have trouble getting along with family members.
• They feel entitled to receiving favors and use you to serve their needs without showing appreciation. They will even get offended if they don’t get their way.
• They do or say something that hurts a friend or a loved one, and tend to blame his/her actions on them. They truly believe that the fault is in the person receiving the hurt because they reacted poorly, were rude or were oversensitive.

I noticed yesterday that the Cubs’ Tyler Chatwood has a forkball changeup grip. The ball spins with a backspin and not a topspin, so it’s not really a split-finger fastball like Bruce Sutter, but it does a great job of taking some MPH off of his pitch.

The Chicago Cubs won their game today in 11 innings and ended with a social distance celebration.

During one start in my high school baseball career I decided to use a windup like Steve Rogers, as shown in this YouTube video. I found that with this windup I couldn’t throw as hard as I normally did, but with that arm angle I had better movement on my fastball, which was sinking a little bit.

My dad hadn’t been to any of my games in a while, but he came to this one, and after a while he started yelling, “C’mon, throw the ball,” meaning that I should throw it harder. That pissed me off in part because our relationship was strained, and also because he hadn’t been to any games, so why should he care?

After he said it again, a very nice man in the stands named Mr. Munoz told him to be quiet, that I knew what I was doing. After all, the other team hadn’t scored, had they? After that my dad stayed quiet. I don’t know Mr. Munoz’ first name, but his son Oscar was really nice and a great baseball player, and as I thought of this today I just wanted to thank Mr. Munoz for that day.

Chicago Cubs pitcher Kyle Hendricks throwing a sinker (sinking fastball) and changeup.

“My vision is ordinarily limited to the catcher,” he says. “A man on base is merely a variable. I see the batter only dimly outlined. I don't care if it's Henry Aaron or Dal Maxvill up there. Either can hurt you, but neither can if I'm doing my job.”

~ a quote from Steve Carlton from this si.com article

As a brief update, surgical procedure #1 of July, 2020 will be taking place this Wednesday (the 15th), so you may not hear from me for a few days.

I was just doing some work on my One Man’s Alaska website, and noticed that hundreds of people every month visit my page about Zeus over there. He was a very special dog, and I’m glad if more people can learn about him, and the effect that an animal can have on a person’s life.

In 1971 — years before Jaws and Close Encounters — Steven Spielberg directed the first episode of the Columbo tv series. In 1974 they paid this little homage to him: Stephen Spelberg, “boy genius.” Here’s a link to that Columbo episode. I assume that Marshall Cahill in that episode is a not-so-subtle reference to a John Wayne movie from the previous year.

As I’m packing to move soon, this photo shows ~1/2 of my medical records/bills, primarily from 2013-17. I hope you never have a health problem like what I went through, but an important “lesson learned” is that there are specialists and then there are specialists.

The short story goes like this: My PCP sent me to an endocrinologist who ran a bunch of blood tests and three MRIs (including one MRI just four days after an angiogram, and walking immediately after an angiogram hurts like a son of a gun), looking for a rare and potentially tumor (a paraganglioma or pheochromocytoma, which have a 10% mortality rate).